At a glance: this is a 11-week study and discussion guide for Deeper by Dane Ortlund, with 88 questions organized by reading assignment. Week 1 is free to read, with no card required.
Dane Ortlund's Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners (2021) is a pastoral and theologically rich guide to the often-misunderstood question of how Christians actually grow. Ortlund's central thesis is disarmingly simple: genuine sanctification is not a matter of trying harder, doing more, or accumulating better spiritual habits. It is a matter of going deeper — deeper into the grace of Jesus Christ, deeper into the gospel truths that saved us in the first place. Drawing on the wisdom of figures such as John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Goodwin, and Herman Bavinck, Ortlund argues that the engine of Christian growth is not self-improvement but an ever-expanding knowledge of and union with Jesus himself. The book is anchored in 2 Peter 3:18 — "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" — and unfolds what it looks like to do exactly that.
This study guide is designed for use in a small group or individual devotional study over ten weeks. The pattern for each week is simple: read the assigned chapter before your group meets (or before your personal study time), spend time journaling your initial reactions and honest responses to what struck you, and then work through the discussion questions together in prayer and conversation. You will get the most out of this guide if you resist the urge to give "correct" answers and instead bring your actual experience — your struggles, your doubts, your moments of recognition — to the table. The questions are designed to move from comprehension to application to reflection, ending each week with a prayer that tries to put the chapter's truths into your own mouth before God.
By the end of this guide, you should have a clearer, more hopeful, and more Christ-centered vision of what it means to grow as a Christian. You will likely find that the very things you thought were obstacles to growth — your weakness, your repeated failures, your sense of spiritual dryness — are precisely the places where the grace of Jesus Christ does its deepest work. Ortlund's great pastoral gift is making the gospel feel not like the starting line you left behind, but like the inexhaustible well you return to every single day.